


Sunspots

by 8611



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Androids, Mentions of Character Death, Multi, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-20
Updated: 2013-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-05 05:35:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1090222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/8611/pseuds/8611
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Their beginnings were simple. A model based on the professor frame, one on the black ops frame, and one on the commander frame. STYL, ALLY, and SCTT.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sunspots

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hydrae (missingsun)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/missingsun/gifts).



> Um, there’s kind of character death in here? Kind of. I can’t explain it without spoiling the story, but there’s a happy ending and it's not major in the context of the story.
> 
> Also, beta’d by the totally awesome [starsandgraces](http://archiveofourown.org/users/starsandgraces). <3
> 
> Last but certainly not least, this wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for [hydrae](http://hydrae.tumblr.com). Her AMMAAZZINNGGG art + AU premise that I used for this can be found [here](http://hydrae.tumblr.com/post/70470409707/ive-been-wanting-to-read-fic-focusing-on-scott). She posted it and I was like HELLO YES WHERE DO I SUBSCRIBE TO THIS NEWSLETTER.
> 
> (will I ever stop writing robots? no, probably not.)

From the very first release - many, many years ago - there are three top of the line models. The company makes other models, of course: for consumers, for military contracts, for the government. They are generic, made of smooth metal and plastic, to give the impression of a human being. However, an impression is all that is needed with them. Nothing more.

The three top models were originally made of those impressionistic plates of metal and plastic, but they grew. Each new release, they became more. More advanced, more hidden, more _human_. 

Their beginnings were simple. A model based on the professor frame, one on the black ops frame, and one on the commander frame: SCTT, ALLY, and STYL. 

The latest iteration is to be the last. The generation before this had to be shut down after the humanity given to them proved to be too much. The project had been a failure in the 11th hour. The monetary burden of that, of the class action suits because of the base models, the loss of a government contract – they are treading water, and not well. 

The chair of the board summons them to his sky high office and sits them down, tells them this.

“Where are we going?” STYL asks, after they are told they’re being sold. 

“STYL and SCTT, you’ve been requested by Androdica-Hale.” Even though he has called them here, he has his back to them, staring out of his wide windows. “ALLY, you’re going to a private security firm called Argent.”

“Silver,” ALLY translates, and frowns. Silver is a soft metal. A bad name for a security firm. 

“Yes,” the chair says, and when he turns around, he looks tired, drawn and pinched at the corners. The light behind him makes his outline glow. 

STYL fidgets, scooting closer to SCTT and lacing their fingers together on the couch. ALLY gets up to stand by them, a hand on SCTT’s shoulder. 

“We don’t want to be separated,” SCTT says. “We’re friends.”

“I’m sorry,” the chair says. “I’m so, so sorry.” 

\---

None of them have ever liked the lab. It’s theirs and theirs only, technically. Only their models have been worked on in this room. It carries too many ghosts, though; things hidden behind the frosted glass at the far end of the room. Their predecessors have been deactivated, but not destroyed. 

(“They have our faces,” SCTT had said once. 

“They have our _everything_ ,” STYL had said. “We are them.” 

“No, we’re not,” ALLY said, fire in her voice. “We’re _us_.”)

They each have their own table, polished smooth surfaces with a memory block to hold their heads. They’d been directed there, plugged in. Lights play across their skin, following their circuitry, making their eyes glow. 

“Last rites,” one of the techs jokes from across the room, and ALLY glares. SCTT stretches out across the expanse between tables for her, but can’t quite make his fingers reach to touch hers. 

“We’re going to get out of this,” STYL says. “Somehow.”

“It’s a bit late for that,” ALLY says. 

“It’s never too late,” SCTT assures them, and when the last rites tech comes over, SCTT grins up at him. He’s young, new; was hired after they were born. 

“You’re not getting out of this,” the tech says, snapping gloves on. He does look a little apologetic, but only slightly.

“You’re right, of course,” SCTT says. “Can you do us a favor? We have a protocol code for pleasant emotions. Would you read that?” 

“I uh-- I don’t know what it is,” the tech says. 

“Here,” SCTT says, reaching for the tech’s pad. The tech hands it over, and SCTT scribbles something with his fingertip, writing a code down on the polished surface.

“Sorry, guys, new hire,” the tech jokes. “I’ll get this all down one day. Or, you know, at my next job.”

“Give us the code?” ALLY asks, and smiles at the tech, serenely. 

(They all know that SCTT is bluffing. There are no codes to control their emotions, those are theirs. Only their processing actions can be controlled.)

“KT-M-8991,” the tech reads. 

“Great, thanks,” STYL says, and they lay quietly while the tech putters about, popping open the hardwire ports on the side of their necks and plugging them in. 

“A doctor will be in shortly to wipe your memories,” the tech says, and they all watch him go with neutral expressions. The lights click off when he leaves, the lab sensing no human bio-signatures to keep them on for. In the dark the three of them are beacons: yellow, red and blue. 

The moment they are alone STYL is up on his elbows, hardlines and wiring trailing from his skin and across the metal of the table. ALLY rolls onto her side, staring at SCTT. 

“What was that?” ALLY asks, frowning. “I don’t feel any differently, and I don’t have any codes in my HUD.” 

“Yeah, did you just make that up to get rid of him?” STYL asks. 

“Nope, it’s a real code,” SCTT says. “I got it from Dr. McCall.”

“Oh,” ALLY says, her voice small. Their creator, the woman with the bright smile and the tight curls who had treated them like humans, not androids, who had given them names that first month that they were under her care. 

(Scott, Allison, and Stiles.)

“It’ll block the memory wipe,” SCTT says. 

“We’re still going to be split up,” STYL says. 

“I’m going to find you guys,” ALLY says. “The first moment I can. I don’t care how highly trained they are, humans are humans, and I’m not. I’ll win.” 

“Try not to kill too many people,” STYL says, grinning. 

“I won’t kill anyone,” ALLY says, sounding slightly put out. 

“We’ll find each other,” SCTT says, and this time when he reaches out for ALLY, she reaches back, STYL taking her other hand. 

“We always will,” STYL says, and their smiles would be lost in the dark if it wasn’t for the glow from their circuits and eyes. 

\---

They are deactivated for shipping, sealed up in carbon fiber coffins and wrapped in loose fitting black clothes. It is always jarring, being reactivated, and even though they are all separated, they come to with arched spines and wide eyes, a jolt of power at the base of their skulls. 

\---

SCTT wakes up to an office ceiling. Someone has laid him out on a couch, and when he recovers enough to move, he carefully sits up to find a man watching him. SCTT knows who he is; he’s seen his face on the news more than enough. 

“You’re Derek Hale,” SCTT says. 

“I am,” Derek says, and stands, shoving his hands in the pockets of his suit. “I was told you have a good processor for what I do.”

“What, running a giant company?”

“Yes.”

\---

STYL is greeted by a young woman, who looks like she is around the age STYL is made to look. She has long, perfectly straight hair that she has clipped back behind one ear, and when she smiles, it does not extend to her eyes. There is something too smooth and too dull about her, and it makes him wary. 

“I’m Cora Hale,” she says, holding out a hand for him to shake. “You’ll be working with me in R&D.”

“R&D for what?”

“Androids. What exactly did you think we do here?”

“I didn’t have access to your files, so I don’t know.”

“Well, first order of business,” Cora says, and picks up a tablet, “we fix that.”

\---

ALLY is in a dark room, in a simple chair, surrounded by guns. There is a man sitting on the table to her right, and when her eyes flicker open they cast a blue glow in the dim light. 

“ALLY?” the man says, and his voice is soft. ALLY looks at him, and finds an older man with grey in his hair and years on his face, although his chest is still broad and his shoulders strong. 

“Yes?” she answers. 

“God, you look just like her,” the man says. “Much more so than the Mark IV.”

ALLY frowns. She has no access to any of her predecessors’ memories, and the Mark IV was five model lines ago.

“Who?” she asks. 

“Allison,” he says softly. “My daughter.” 

ALLY doesn’t realize she’s white-knuckling the chair until a note pops up in the corner of her vision that she’s putting too much stress on the joints in her hands. 

\---

SCTT stands in the atrium of Androdica-Hale with Derek and stares at the people as they sweep past, as if none of them care than their boss and an android are standing in the middle of it all. 

“I forget that no one knows what I am,” SCTT says. “I guess the general public wouldn’t know about my model.” 

“Not since your Mark IV line,” Derek says. “And the facial build on those was off. You still looked robotic. The Mark IXs are beyond anything even we’ve been able to do.”

“We are,” SCTT says. 

“Sorry?” Derek asks. 

“ _We_ are. I’m right here; you don’t have to say Mark IX.” 

“It’s compartmentalization,” Derek says, frowning. “You’re very human.”

“That was the plan,” SCTT says, shrugging and crossing his arms. 

Derek looks down at him for a moment, something hard in his eyes, and then he heads for the elevator, an unspoken command for SCTT to follow him. 

Sun streams through the glass-sided elevator as they rise upwards, the ground dropping away and the city spreading out around them. Information spirals in his vision, showing their elevation, the addresses of the buildings, weather and wind conditions. 

“I never got out much,” SCTT says. “The city looks pretty cool, though.”

Derek just makes a small, aborted noise in answer. 

\---

STYL finds SCTT somewhat sooner and more easily than he would have thought. There’s a overnight charging bay for the executive assistant ‘droids on one of the upper floors, and considering neither of them are supposed to exist, they’re pointed towards it at the end of the day. 

The other androids don’t pay them much mind, except to introduce themselves and wish them a ‘pleasant tenure at Androdica-Hale.’ 

“God, blanks creep me out,” STYL says, pulling a face as he drags the hardline out of a charging pod so that he and SCTT can sit on the floor and talk. SCTT does the same, watching as the others neatly tuck themselves into the pods and drop into stasis. 

“It’s… unsettling,” SCTT says, pushing his collar out of the way to plug the line in. A smiley face appears next to his charge bar, a goofy little addition that Dr. McCall had added after deviating from the graphics set that she had been given by a higher-up. SCTT can’t help but grin in response every time he sees it. “But it’s not their fault.”

“I know,” STYL says, sighing. He slumps forward, staring at the ground. “Did you contact ALLY?”

“I can’t,” SCTT says. “I can’t even find her signature in the city.”

“That’s not good,” STYL says. “What if she hasn’t been reactivated? Shit, how did we not think about that? What if one of us hadn’t been turned back on?” 

“She has to have been,” SCTT says. “We’ll find her.” 

“Shit,” STYL says, and drops his head into his hands. “I wish she was here. It’d be so much easier.”

“Yeah,” SCTT says, and scoots forward to wrap STYL up in a hug, their bodies tucked together. 

\---

“I don’t understand,” ALLY says. “I mean, I do, logically. I understand the words you’re saying to me. But why would you do that? Give you daughter’s face to someone?”

Chris –- the man’s name is Chris, he’d told her that -– is slumped at the breakfast table, the food on it untouched. There is early morning light coming in through the wide windows. Everything in the house is smooth and modular, and it spreads out over a wide footprint. ALLY had explored last night, finding a house that was empty of people except for Chris, and full of weapons. She had guessed that it had been decorated for him. There were no personal touches. Somehow the guns had seemed the most like something Chris would have chosen.

(They are also oddly familiar in ALLY’s hands, and she is reminded of her original programming.) 

“Because at the time, she was alive. No one expected things to go the way they did,” Chris says, staring down into his coffee. 

ALLY looks back at him quickly before returning to staring out of the glass wall, out into the back yard. 

“So she died,” ALLY says. 

“Yeah, in the Arab League conflict. We were contracted to support the Northeastern territory, and I didn’t want to her to, but… she was an adult. She was a CO, and more than capable of making her own choices. It was years after the original ALLY model – you’re her, at 17.” 

“There was a doctor who called me Allison,” ALLY says. “When I was first activated.”

“Melissa. Her son was part of the program as well. There was a third kid as well, the SecDef’s son. It was random, just voluntary.”

“So they didn’t know each other?”

“The kids? No. The parents obviously did. I had worked with the DOD, so I knew Secretary Stilinski, and obviously I had dealings with Dr. McCall.”

“I’m sorry,” ALLY says, after a beat. “Although I still don’t know why you would have purchased me if I just bring back bad memories.”

Chris grins, something razor cut and lopsided, and he meets her eyes. 

“My whole family is dead, ALLY. I’m an old man. I know I’m putting a burden on you, but all I’d like is for you to be here. I have a lot of happy memories, especially of Allison at your age.” 

She finally comes to sit down at the table, and he smiles. 

“I’d offer you breakfast, but…” he says, and ALLY grins. 

“It’s ok,” ALLY says. “I’ve always thought orange juice looks weird, anyway.”

Chris laughs, and it softens his eyes. 

\---

“He wants you to take over the company?” STYL asks, stopping dead in the hall and turning to SCTT to gape at him. 

“No, no,” SCTT says, shaking his head. “Just help him run it. Evidently he never wanted to take control at all.”

“That’s still... god. That’s huge. Can you even do that?”

“Well, I mean, maybe? I’ve been downloading a lot of memoirs and documentaries about CEOs and big companies and that kind of stuff. I have all the information I need. Theoretically.”

“Just not so much in practice?”

“Yeah.” 

“STYL!” The both turn to see Cora standing by the elevator, looking angry. STYL has noticed that she looks angry most of the time. The rest of the time she’s blank. 

“Gotta go,” STYL says, saluting SCTT and walking backwards. SCTT grins at him, waving. 

SCTT spends the rest of his ‘lunch’ break wandering the halls, mapping the building in his mind. When he finally returns to Derek’s office there is a storm out on the horizon, heavy clouds hanging over the ocean and menacing the city. 

“My weather was wrong,” SCTT notes. “It said we wouldn’t get that rain until evening rush hour.”

“I’m sure it’ll still be here then,” Derek sighs, and looks up at SCTT. “You’re making friends, I hear?”

“STYL reminds me of a friend, and we’re from the same place, so I figure I knew another model like him, once,” SCTT lies. They were not programmed to lie. That is something they learned. 

“Keep him close,” Derek says, standing up and buttoning his suit coat. “It’s good to have friends.”

Derek says it so bleakly that SCTT is reminded of the storm brewing outside the windows. 

\---

Although she does knock first, ALLY is most of the way into Chris’ office by the time he looks up, a sliver of light from his desk lamp catching the curve of his glasses. 

“I’ve been worried about something,” ALLY says, and she stays standing. 

“What?” Chris asks. 

“I, uh...“ ALLY twists her fingers together, looking down at her hands. While she knows she doesn’t trust people so much as she weighs pros and cons in a pastiche of human trust, she feels, somehow, like she can _trust_ Chris. 

“I’m not going to be angry,” Chris says, frowning.

“You might be,” ALLY says. “We broke kind of a big rule.” 

“We?”

“SCTT, STYL and I.”

“Ah,” Chris says, leaning back in his chair. “I figured your memory hadn’t been wiped, from the way you’ve been talking.”

“Oh,” ALLY says, surprised. She feels very human in that moment, caught in a slip-up that she shouldn’t have made. It’s a strange feeling. 

“It’s fine. It might be better this way. Memory wipes are Nemeton policy, not mine. You were worried about that?”

“About SCTT and STYL. I haven’t been able to contact them because we’re outside of SF’s firewall, and you have secure lines in the house. Government grade.”

“Good eye,” Chris says. “Oh, processor, I suppose. They’re your friends?”

“Yeah,” ALLY says. “And I told them I’d come find them. But I don’t just want to run off.”

“Were they sold to other private contracts?”

“No, Androdica-Hale.”

“Oh, that’s easy,” Chris says. “I can schedule an appointment, I know the COO.”

“That is easy,” ALLY says. “Thanks, Chris. I really do appreciate it.”

“You’re welcome,” Chris says, and his grin is easy. 

ALLY’s almost reached the door before she turns around.

“You said our face models didn’t know each other. They weren’t friends?” she asks. Chris shakes his head. “What happened to the other two?”

“I think the SecDef’s kid became a professor, although I don’t know. McCall’s a senator, out east.”

“They’re both still alive?”

“As far as I know.”

“Good,” ALLY says, smiles. She can’t imagine what Chris is going through, but she’s glad to know that Dr. McCall still has Scott, that she could work with them and not see a ghost every time she looked at SCTT. 

\---

“You should get home, rush hour is going to suck,” STYL says, watching the storm pound against Cora’s office window. “I can finish logging these notes.”

“It’s fine,” Cora says, never looking up from her computer. 

“Do you ever stop working?” STYL asks. “You’re kind of a workaholic.”

“It’s easier,” Cora says, stony faced and frowning. 

“Sure,” STYL says, not wanting to push it. She looks like a coiled spring, and STYL would prefer not to unleash it. 

Cora suddenly gets up with an angry little sigh, and in opening her door - rather violently - she catches her forearm on the lock. It slices the skin open, leaving a long, thin gash.

“Shit,” STYL says. “Uh, nearest first aid kit on this floor is 12 meters down--“

“I know where it is,” Cora snaps, and STYL’s eyes fall to her arm to check how bad it is. 

“Oh my god,” STYL says. There is no blood. There isn’t anything human in the wound. Under her skin, Cora looks just like STYL does – inorganic mesh tissue and circuitry. 

“It’s nothing,” Cora says. 

“It’s not nothing, you’re an and--“

“ _Don’t say it._ ”

For several moments, neither moves. The only sound is the rain on the window, a relentless drum of water on glass. 

“You don’t have an external or wireless connections, do you?” STYL asks. “I’d have known that you were a–- that you weren’t human.”

“I _am_ human,” Cora says. “As much as you are. We have the same processor.”

“I’m made to seem human, but I’m not,” STYL points out, and immediately regrets the twisted look it produces on Cora’s face. “Um, totally kidding. You are super human. 110%.”

Cora looks away from him for a moment before shutting the door and sitting back down at her desk, almost silent in her movements. 

“Don’t tell Derek you know,” Cora says. 

“I don’t really know Derek Hale at all,” STYL points out.

“Yeah, but you hang out with SCTT. And he knows Derek.”

“Does Derek…”

“He doesn’t like to be reminded,” Cora says. 

“Of what?” Stiles asks. 

“Failure,” Cora says simply. 

\---

ALLY has never been in a car while she’s active, and she stays glued to the window as farms and forests streak past outside the window of Chris’ truck. 

“This is all so beautiful,” ALLY says, pressing a hand to the glass, fingers spread. 

“We’ll go camping sometime,” Chris says. “There are mountains if you go east instead of west, they’re really something. They really didn’t let you out, did they?”

“Not much,” ALLY says, frowning. “We were research projects.” 

“The program didn’t start that way,” Chris says. “You guys were supposed to be the best of the best.”

“We still are,” ALLY says. “Like, I know that you have four firearms in this truck, that I can fire all of them, and that I can use several parts of this vehicle as a weapon if I need to. If that all fails, which is highly unlikely, I’m skilled in several forms of hand-to-hand.”

“You’d be handy in a bar fight, basically,” Chris says, grinning at her out of the corner of his eye. 

“Oh, majorly,” ALLY laughs, grinning. They fall into silence for a while, before ALLY speaks again. “Do you know if the older models were… deployed?”

“I think they were, on small assignments.”

ALLY can’t imagine being sent out. She knows that she has one purpose, and that any assignment she would have would end with people dying. Maybe the older models were ok with that, but ALLY’s not sure if she can kill in cold blood, even with her programming. 

\---

Cora comes to find them in the charging bay, when the storm has passed the building is mostly empty, a weekend calm fallen over everything. The door hisses open and Cora carefully steps through. Although she’s usually in heels, she’s barefoot now, and she walks to them on silent feet. STYL notices that her arm has been patched, the seams already starting to blend into the surrounding skin. They can’t heal in the traditional sense, but the nanites in their tissue can approximate something close. 

“Can I join you guys?” Cora asks.

“Sure,” STYL says, patting the spot next to him on the ground. “Cora, this is SCTT.”

“Nice to officially meet you,” SCTT says with a grin, shaking her hand. She gives him a tight smile in return. 

“I wanted to apologize for snapping at you yesterday,” Cora says. 

“It’s fine, I pushed,” STYL says. “That’s kinda what I do.” 

“Which is also fine,” Cora says. “And Derek wanted me to come find you. Both of you. There’s a friend here to see you.”

“A friend?” STYL asks. 

“ALLY,” SCTT says, standing up. “I just found her signature. She’s here.”

“She is?” STYL says, scrambling upright. “Let’s go, then!”

SCTT and STYL practically drag Cora out of the room and to the elevator, heading for Derek’s office. When they shove the door open, Derek is standing and talking to another executive and a greying man that neither SCTT nor STYL know. 

ALLY is there, standing in the middle of the room and staring at the pictures on the walls. SCTT and STYL clamber over the couch to get to her, and she turns just in time to catch them in a hug, the three of them falling to the floor laughing. They cling to each other, tangled in a pile and not minding, their faces all pressed close together. 

\---

Hiking had been ALLY’s idea. Chris’ house sits tucked into the foothills, and he’d taken her before. Winter had come and gone, and she wanted to get back outside, into the fresh air and on the other side of the glass. 

“Yeah, I don’t think my programing is hiking compatible,” STYL says, grinning. ALLY boofs him in the head and hands over a pair of hiking shoes. 

“This’ll be fun,” SCTT says. “Great outdoors and all that.”

“You two are crazy,” STYL says. 

“Then you are too,” ALLY says, smiling brightly. 

They weave through the sparse trees and then into the almond orchards next to Chris’ property, walking the wide grassy avenues between the trees. The branches have started to show signs of blossoms, the dead leaves from last year almost gone from the ground. 

It's easy for them, with their HUDs providing maps and alerting them to even the slightest uneven bit of ground, but it's still fun.

They take a break near the crest of a hill, sitting down on a wide, warm boulder, legs folded. 

“Ok, I might be having fun,” STYL hedges, and ALLY laughs. SCTT grins and draws them both in, an arm around their shoulders, and they huddle together in the warm sun. ALLY presses a kiss into SCTT’s jaw and STYL noses against the sun-kissed skin at the juncture of his shoulder and neck. 

They stay there on the rock, laid out all together in the sun for hours, fingers and limbs entwined.


End file.
